Sydney -- More than 4,000 people were isolated by flood waters and as many as 1,800 have been evacuated in the Australian state of New South Wales after a week of heavy rains, the government said Monday.
As a result of this week's rains, the government has so far issued disaster declarations in 17 of the state's rural and suburban districts, predominantly in the south and west. They join 17 other districts declared disaster areas after flooding in October.
The flooding, which is expected to continue as a new storm front is forecast to bring extended heavy rains through Friday, has already destroyed an estimated $500 million in crops in the region, according to a statement issued by New South Wales Emergency Services.
Earth Changes
© Reuters/Carlos Garcia Rawlins
People evacuate after the flooding of a river in Higuerote, about 100 km (60 miles) east of Caracas December 5, 2010.
People evacuate after the flooding of a river in Higuerote, about 100 km (60 miles) east of Caracas December 5, 2010.
Heavy rains have killed at least 32 people and forced more than 100,000 from their homes in recent days. Emergencies have been declared in various states, and the country's Caribbean coast has been particularly hard hit by mudslides.
In a televised broadcast from one flooded area on Sunday, the president told the National Guard to begin moving families into vacant hotel accommodation.
"See how many buildings there are abandoned by tourists, and from today begin to occupy them with families," he said. "You will not pay anything," he told displaced people.
© AFP/ENWH-HO/Leslie Brown
An undated handout photo released by the Eagles Nest Wildlife Hospital shows wildlife expert Harry Kunz holding two extremely rare blue-winged albino kookaburras in Ravenshoe, believed to have been swept from their nests in a wild storm, at the wildlife sanctuary.
An undated handout photo released by the Eagles Nest Wildlife Hospital shows wildlife expert Harry Kunz holding two extremely rare blue-winged albino kookaburras in Ravenshoe, believed to have been swept from their nests in a wild storm, at the wildlife sanctuary.
The six-week-old birds, renowned for their laughing cry, were found waterlogged at the base of a tree by a cattle farmer near Ravenshoe, in far northern Queensland, said Harry Kunz from the Eagles Nest Wildlife Sanctuary.
The pink-eyed, pink-beaked and starkly white creatures, thought to be sisters, are the first specimens of their kind ever found in Australia, Kunz said. They are still too young to feed themselves or fly.
"Everybody asks me 'are they rare?' They have never been seen because in nature they would not survive a few days out of the nest because their white colour sticks out and every reptile, owl or predator will get them," Kunz told AFP.
"In the whole of Australia I know there is about three white laughing kookaburras but they are not albino, they have black eyes. For blue wings nobody knows that they exist or can be hatching in this colour."
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At first hand: NSW Premier Kristina Keneally visits Wagga yesterday to see for herself the damage being done to Wagga by the rising floodwaters.
At first hand: NSW Premier Kristina Keneally visits Wagga yesterday to see for herself the damage being done to Wagga by the rising floodwaters.
Premier Kristina Keneally inspected the water-besieged city in a State Emergency Service (SES) helicopter yesterday morning before announcing Wagga had been declared a natural disaster area, paving the way for a range of government financial assistance.
"It's quite humbling to see what nature can do to farms, people's properties and people's livelihoods," Ms Keneally said after landing near the SES headquarters on Fernleigh Road.
The river peaked yesterday evening just six millimetres above the 1991 flood level of 9.61 metres and well below the 10.75 metres recorded in 1974.
Emergency Services Minister, Steve Whan, said floodwaters had caused tens of millions of dollars damage around the state and ruined the best harvest in a decade.
"Up to half a billion dollars crop value has been lost," Mr Whan said.
Srinagar - Severe cold conditions, coupled with power shortage, has affected normal life in the Kashmir valley, where Srinagar recorded coldest night after the minimum temperature dipped to minus 3.4 degree, 2.4 degree below normal.
Drass, the world's second coldest place after Siberia, remained coldest recording minimum temperature at minus 20 degree.
Taps, ponds and small nallahs were frozen this morning as people woke up. Water on roads could be seen frozen, However, it melted as the day progressed.
Because of an open sky during the night in the absence of any Western Disturbances (WD), the minimum temperature goes down, UNI quoted a weather office spokesman as saying.
He said the WD, originating from Arabian sea and entering the Kashmir through Afghanistan and Pakistan, are very weak resulting in dry weather conditions.
Drass, the world's second coldest place after Siberia, remained coldest recording minimum temperature at minus 20 degree.
Taps, ponds and small nallahs were frozen this morning as people woke up. Water on roads could be seen frozen, However, it melted as the day progressed.
Because of an open sky during the night in the absence of any Western Disturbances (WD), the minimum temperature goes down, UNI quoted a weather office spokesman as saying.
He said the WD, originating from Arabian sea and entering the Kashmir through Afghanistan and Pakistan, are very weak resulting in dry weather conditions.
© A2ATLIQ (RFE/RL)
A snowbound scene from Tatarstan's capital, Kazan.
A snowbound scene from Tatarstan's capital, Kazan.
A severe cold front brought gusty winds and wet snow to the Russian republic over the weekend, resulting in the loss of electricity for some 200,000 people in southeastern Tatarstan. Efforts to restore power continue, and more than 200 rescue teams are involved in operations to help people stranded by the inclement weather.
In Kazan, traffic jams and airport delays were reported, and school classes have been canceled.
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The global average temperature has increased over the past 160 years, but short-term trends in temperature and sea ice seem to be at odds with each other and need more research, the UK Met Office's Hadley Center said. In a report on long- and short-term climate trends, the Hadley Center found several factors that indicate a warming world and said 2010 has been one of the warmest years on record. The report drew on the work of more than 20 institutions worldwide and used a range of measurements from satellites, weather balloons, weather stations, ocean buoys, ships, and field surveys.One of the warmest years on record - are we to believe this? If global warming was such a slam dunk, why are they now tipping their hands mentioning the colder short-term trend? How can they define what is going on as a short-term trend when the future is not written yet?
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Three of the seals clubbed to death in New Zealand.
Three of the seals clubbed to death in New Zealand.
Government officials condemned the attacks on the protected species as brutal and senseless and vowed to fully prosecute anyone involved.
The Department of Conservation said the bludgeoned bodies of 23 fur seals had been found at the Ohau Point colony, a rocky stretch of coastline near a highway that is a breeding ground for the animals.
Officials said eight pups - some just days old - were among those killed, and there were likely more juveniles that had died or would soon because their mothers were among those slaughtered.
The condition of the carcasses and the wounds indicated the attackers had returned several times to the scene, possibly for as long as two weeks. The site is at the bottom of a steep, 100-foot cliff with no easy access, and the bodies were only just discovered.
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Colombian emergency workers and residents used spades and rescue dogs to find victims.
Colombian emergency workers and residents used spades and rescue dogs to find victims.
According to Red Cross officials, torrential rains have caused a major landslide in the city of Medellin, leaving at least 200 people missing, state-run BBC reported on Sunday.
"The initial count is that there may be 150-200 people considered missing. So far we have rescued three alive," said Cesar Uruena, a Red Cross official, adding that "We are focused on moving rubble to see if we find survivors. We've never had this many people affected [in Colombia] by the rainy season."
Officials say that at least two million people have been affected by the torrential rains and that over 10,000 homes have been destroyed as the result of the disaster in the country.
© Daily Mail
Winter's icy grip: Drivers and pedestrians battle through blizzards in Kent last week.
Winter's icy grip: Drivers and pedestrians battle through blizzards in Kent last week.
World temperatures, it went on, were locked inexorably into an ever rising trend: 'Our experimental decadal forecast confirms previous indications that about half the years 2010-2019 will be warmer than the warmest year observed so far - 1998.'
Met Office officials openly boasted that they hoped by their statements to persuade the Copenhagen gathering to impose new and stringent carbon emission limits - an ambition that was not to be met.
Last week, halfway through yet another giant, 15,000 delegate UN climate jamboree, being held this time in the tropical splendour of Cancun in Mexico, the Met Office was at it again.
Never mind that Britain, just as it was last winter and the winter before, was deep in the grip of a cold snap, which has seen some temperatures plummet to minus 20C, and that here 2010 has been the coolest year since 1996.
Globally, it insisted, 2010 was still on course to be the warmest or second warmest year since current records began.
